Lydia
by TapTapAlways
Summary: A small peek at Lydia's perspective as a side to the post-book/film story I've written for the Bennet sisters who stick together (called "Lizzy For Everyday and My Divine Goddess For Special Occasions"). There is also one for the other character who got away, Charlotte Lucas.
1. Chapter 1

Lydia snapped her chair back to the point where it fell backwards as she rose. She had written to both her utterly rich oldest sisters, and told them she was a widow, and they were both so inconsiderate! The least one might expect was som sympathy and for them to ask her to live with them now, but no! Neither one of them had invited her, and she knew for a fact that they had asked _Kitty_! How was that any different? What a lack of tact - she was far more interesting than Kitty, anyway!

Normally, Lydia wouldn't let the lack of invitation bother her, but not only Elizabeth but _Jane_ (influenced by Elizabeth and her horrible husband, no doubt, even Wickham had hated him and he could have _really_ poor judgement) had stated very rudely that she could not come to them. How dare they tell her she wasn't welcome? She was their _sister_! They were such snobs, these days! It was unbelievable, really!

And then they dared, dared, to send her - send, as if she was a young girl and not a married woman - to live with their mother in the middle of nowhere! It was so boring, just the thought of it! And she would have liked to live with them and their servants, being a mother was so much work! She bet neither Jane nor Elizabeth looked after their own children. It was so _unfair_!

Elizabeth was so unhelpful lately, she was so rich and yet she was barely giving Lydia scraps. Life was so unfair! In a huff, Lydia slammed the letter onto the desk and stalked away without righting the chair. She would have to fix it herself later - _some_ people didn't have servants to wait on them - but she pretended not to. Life was so unfair - Lydia was special and everyone seemed to have just forgotten. She hated her family sometimes. They were all just jealous because Lydia was the prettiest and had married first.

She'd never admit that it was her, who was a little bit jealous. And she certainly wouldn't ever say that she was very jealous. But she was.


	2. Chapter 2

_So, some reviewers seem to think that Lydia's married life would help her mature some. While I do agree, and I, too, see Wickham as being physically abusive, I do not think that would_ help _her in any way at all. Why would it? It is ridiculous. She would realise how the world works, yes, in that it can be a cruel place, but really, abuse doesn't make you a better person. Some people pull through with amazing strength, yes, but in Lydia's case I think she'd be just as frivolous and vain, only that now she'd also be disillusionised and bitter. It is my utter belief that she would be way worse to deal with,_ not _more insightful. Besides, this is my slightly cynical counterweight to all the very optimistic ones - lovely as those can be - so maybe it being a little_ too _opposite of optimistic is sort of par for the course._

 _TapTap_

Lydia had not even been invited to their father's funeral. She didn't actually _care_ , but she _was_ looking for things to find affront in, and that did nicely.

She had arrived last night to the quaint (and utterly boring) little cottage Elizabeth and her dreadful "Mr Darcy" had doubtlessly chosen just to be cheap, thinking little of the comfort of their poor widowed mother and the poor widowed herself!

To make matters worse, there was only the two servants: the maid and the cook, and Kitty did _not_ have to come! Kitty, who was _so much less_ interesting _or_ pretty than Lydia, got to live at _Pemberley_ and attend lots of balls and dances and maybe even the _season_! It was not _fair_!

Annoyed, Lydia left her sitting room in the middle of packing, as her daughter screamed, and the maid _somehow_ didn't get the idea that _she_ was meant to do something about that! She was the servant!

Lydia slammed the door to the tiny nursery and glared at the crib. She had loved to hear that she had gotten a daughter: and though she'd been strange-looking at first, she was so sweet and cute... when she was not screaming, that was. Lydia, too, felt like crying her lungs out. Life was so _unfair_.

While Lydia was nursing her baby girl, Elizabeth and Jane, doing much the same in another part of the country (though _their_ process involved a lot less complaining), could have explained a few things to her. They could have told her, though she wouldn't have listened, that she was lucky to have a roof over her head with these unfortunate circumstances and the fact that she'd spent all the money she'd been set aside on frivolous things.

They would have told her that she had landed herself in a difficult situation by her own fault, that it was merely the natural consequences of her uncaring of proper conduct, and they most certainly could have explained to her the massive difference between an unmarried younger sister, with an unblemished record, be it Georgiana or Katherine, and a widowed girl who had eloped and now had a dead husband, a little girl, and was quite possibly in the family way again. She could not enter the season like that, and with no dowry, no particular beauty beyond youth (which was slipping as well, after four lie-ins) and two children as a burden - who would take her as a wife again?

Lydia, for all that she had gotten aquainted with both the rougher sides of life and with the details of badly chosen husbands, did not know this, nor did she care to be educated, but maybe she would eventually figure out, that she had gotten her chance and ruined it, Wickham's death not in any way having undone the evil he'd done to her chances.


	3. Chapter 3

_Kitty's wedding will be described in far more detail in the main story of this arc, "Lizzy For Everyday, Devine Goddess For Special Occasions"._

 _TapTap_

Lydia was upset, naturally. Nevermind that there was a distinct _again_ in this. Not to mention a distinct lack of cause which was bordering on resembling their mother at this point. Her sisters would say that they were quite tired of this now, even though usually they were only subjected to her highly unfair complaints in letters. Too many letters, perhaps, but at least both the irrationally displeased widows lived in another county. Today, however, even though Lydia was actually, for once, present, no one listened to a word she said anyway. In all fairness, this was _entirely_ her own fault.

Just because it was Kitty's wedding day, that was no excuse for how _poor_ Lydia's terrible relatives did not even seem to even know that _the most important_ person in the room was was there! How rude, when she made all this effort to come there!

Even Mrs Bennet was no help. Lydia wanted to brag about how she was in the family way - like she had regailed them all about her early marriage - but Mary was visibly so as well, and though Mrs Bennet had _finally_ stopped to coo so terribly over Jane's _adorable_ (Lydia could only roll her eyes, and then her mother unfairly scolded her about being unladylike, as if she was a young girl and not a married, widowed woman!) little son; _Lizzy_ out of all people had a newborn daughter, outrageously hailed as the first granddaughter by _everybody_ , nevermind that _Lydia's_ daughter was almost three years old! Since when did Lydia not even _count_?! It was outrageous!

Lydia was trying to get Kitty to listen - Kitty had used to be a good listener! - but she was so caught up in her silly little match which was arranged by _Darcy_ , so pathetic! _Anyone_ could have told her how _ironic_ this bitterness was, but no one bothered to. Enraged, Lydia went into the carriage with her silly mother without even bothering to say goodbye or even check that her daoughter was with them. She forgot about her entirely, in fact, until the next morning at the inn they stayed in until the got back to the cottage.

Even then, when she finally realised her daughter was not with her, Lydia shrugged and decided somebody else might as well look after her. Lydia, after all, was so unfairly treated. Someone else could certainly get to do something for once!

Somehow, the thought that her daughter and only surviving child might be in danger, never occured to Lydia. Maybe that was her problem all along: the youngest Bennet sister forgot easily; no matter how important the matter itself really was, she tended to lose focus when her mind turned to the novelty of other things. Elizabeth, Mr Darcy or even Mr James could have noted that maybe for Lydia, this was the reason for so many of her problems.


	4. Chapter 4

At Catherine (Kitty to her sisters, as a remnant from her childhood) and her new husband's wedding, no one was particularly surprised to see Lydia apparently forget her daughter as she and Mrs Bennet went home. Bingley was the one to pick the little girl up and entertain her as they wondered where her mother had gone, but as only a quick check with his wife revealed that the two Bennet widows had in fact already left, the Bingleys merely kept her.

Then when, some months later, Lydia was blessed with yet another lovely, healthy, charming daughter, she, as well, ended up with relatives. Jane and Elizabeth had gone to assist their younger sister, like they had for Mary just before, and as Lydia showed very little interest in either of her daughters at this time, they took their newborn niece back with then. They took turns to take care for her during her first weeks until finally, _she_ came to be raised in the vicarage, as she was almost to the day of age with Mary and her husband's little boy, with only eleven days separating the two cousins.

As the days and months turned into years, as days and weeks and months are wont to do, Lydia and Mrs Bennet were talked about only more and more briefly by the rest of the family. They fit in poorly with the daughters based in Derbyshire and their families, and as time passed, they were not forgotten so much as isolated and distanced, mostly by their own devises, though maybe not intentionally so.

Mary and her priest were blessed with a little girl of their own eventually, but the second Miss Wickham - taking her aunt and uncle's name entirely before her first birthday - remained with them, leaving them a happy and perfectly peaceful family of five. No one really talked about it, but Mr Darcy set aside a neat sum for the education of both the "vicarage girls", as well as two dowries for when that time came. Mary was as grateful for this when it came to her daughter as to her niece, never differing between the two.

Indeed, besides the fact that Mary's girl was darkhaired and her niece blond, no one could really tell a difference between the two sweet little girls, though one was a touch older than the other. Most people unfamiliar with the story assumed, in fact, that all three of the children belonging with the pair was actually, even from birth, their own. In a way, this was also entirely accurate. Having the knowledge that Mary's oldest sister was blond as well, thus explaining the appearance of the "oldest Miss James" the fact was genuinely forgotten in most circles and certainly in their neighbourhood before the girls even started school.

As for the first daughter of Lydia and her redcoat, she remained with the Bingleys, turning into quite a young beauty, much like her adopted sisters, as Bingley and Jane had five children of their own, both of them loving souls who doted on all of their offspring. Jane always called her the gift who made their half dozen complete, and no child in their home ever lacked for love.

Lizzy and Mr Darcy never had more than three children of their own, perhaps following Lizzy's near danger with their little girl at his birth, but they, too, were happy in their little family, and with the Bingley's and Mary's family both so close to Pemberley, not one of their children ever wanted for playmates.

As such, time ran on peacefully, the two bonus girls of name Bingley and James well loved and well cared for, until a peaceful afternoon in the vicarage, some fifteen years after Catherine's (formerly Kitty Bennet) wedding. It was a marvellous, crisp, happy autumn day, as evidenced by Mrs Darcys insitance to walk there with her nieces, the Miss Bingleys, as well as her own daughter, instead of talking a carriage.

They arrived in a flurry of gentle upset and activity which somehow reminded Elizabeth of that afternoon some twenty years ago when her beloved husband first asked for her hand, somewhat rudely, only to be even more so rudely rebuffed.

Different from most of their children, who were all still children - certainly Georgiana's youngest was still in the nursery - (this was also true of Charlotte's children, as a matter of fact, but she had so many in her second marriage that this fact was hardly even in need of mentioning) Ameliana Bingley, formerly Wickham, was now eighteen years of age and however young, a grown woman.

Jane would have been deeply surprised to hear of her news, but Elizabeth, ever the more shrewd sister, took it just as calmly as Mary, who too, was quite the steady woman and not easily upset. In fact, Elizabeth was glad Ameliana had been staying with Mary for a few weeks when this had occured.

With the audience of Miss Darcy, the two Miss James and the three younger Miss Bingleys, including her own sister by birth, as well as her sisters as raised, Ameliana retold the story of how she had been visited early this morning by the young priest of the nearest parish, and he had offered for her hand. While the young woman told the younger girls in flourished and romance, the two older sisters, their mothers and aunts, had quite the different discussion in the other end of the room, where Mary was doing some mending, which Elizabeth was quick to assist her with.

"It sounds like a good match - Ameliana has not grown up her whole life in a vicarage like her sister, but she has spent time here enough, I'd think. I tend to think that we do better - and chose better - with things where we know what to expect," Elizabeth stated calmly, eyes on her needlework.

"Oh, I agree," Mary tilted her head as she mended a stitch. "She is a sensible girl, and he is a very pleasant young man, they shall do well together." "Like you did with your reverend?" Elizabeth's tone and certainly her smile, could only be described as teasing. Mary smiled, the years having granted her insights into her own choises and behaviour of earlier years that she had not possessed at the time. She had been overly read and perhaps a bit arrogant, just like Elizabeth had been prejudiced once upon a time, and they were both aware of it.

"Well, it did turn out marvellously for me," Mary admitted willingly, looking over to where her two daughters and flock of nieces sat with a fond smile. "I know that I used a bit too much knowledge gained from books at her age, and to little of my own head perhaps, but I was right on one account. One must be sensible as well as following ones heart, and I think Ameliana does both in this. She is a thoroughly sensible girl, not so frivollous as her mother and just as clever, she just _uses_ it."

"Oh, I don't think anyone ever accused _Jane_ of being frivolous," Elizabeth pointed out with a pointed look at her younger sister, hinting at Mary's own relationship with the girl in question's younger sister, almost making Mary blush in the process. "They both have the best of us all," Mary granted, "in fact... they all do," she amended, including all of their children.

"They have many good influences in their uncles, all of them," Elizabeth's eyes were distincly fond as she said so, and Mary's were no less so as she nodded her agreement.

With this, the two older women fell into a comfortable silence, listening to the conversation of the younger girls in the room, who were enthusing about dresses and flowers and the beauty of small, intimate weddings. It was so similar, but also so different a conversation from one collected straight from their own lives at that age that they both had to smile. There was n doubt that the young were always young, but at the same time, they could both recognise just how different these young women were than they had been at that age.

Good as their intentions had been, Mr and Mrs Bennet had somewhat failed at making their young daughters sensible, even though at the same time, they hadn't, as said daughters were (mostly) quite sensible grown women, and it was indeed easier, raising children with the right means, and no fear of an entailment hanging over your heads.

Life had turned out good in the end, and both Elizabeth and Mary felt some pride, looking over at the glad and clever young girl and the now blushing, brightly smiling, excited young woman with sparkling eyes they had seen their niece grow up to become. It might have started somewhat precautiously, but their lives were good.


End file.
